Rick Perry Positions Himself For 2016 – And Fox News Helps

Rick Perry got 10 minutes on Fox News’ Your World not too long ago (5/3/12,) ostensibly to promote a Republican-centric view of job creation. But somehow, Mitt Romney’s platform for job creation took a backseat to Perry’s.

Host Neil Cavuto introduced the segment by saying that retailers had just posted their “worst sales since 2009.” He added, “My next guest knows what it takes to create jobs. His state has created more than 1.2 million of them since he took office more than a decade ago.”

Cavuto talked about businesses expanding in Texas, such as Carls Jr., because of the “very favorable tax environment, a very pro-business environment.”

Perry said, “One of the reasons that Texas is the best place in the country to do business according to CEO Magazine… is taxes and regulation... I think it’s 650 of their corporate leaders across the country were asked to measure the states with this matrix of taxes, regulation, legal system, quality of life, the quality of the work force, and Texas came in number one… It’s not rocket science, Neil. It’s having the confidence that the private sector actually knows how to run their own businesses, and that they don’t need big government telling them how to run their business.”

While conditions in Texas may indeed be fabulous for businesses, for regular people - not so much. As Huffington Post reports, many of Texas’ jobs are low paying jobs, and they share the highest proportion of minimum wage workers. Furthermore, a study found that from 2007-2011, about 40% of the jobs created in Texas went to undocumented immigrants. Perry’s so-called “Texas Miracle” comes with crowded homeless shelters, low-wage jobs and high numbers of worker deaths.

But somehow, “fair and balanced” Neil Cavuto never got around to bringing any of that up.